Embracing Time

Among the Masters at the National Championships

I have to confess that I used to think masters competitors were a bit pathetic. Not older runners keeping in shape, enjoying the outdoors–they were cool, I hoped to be like that someday–but those serious competitors wearing flashy racing flats and singlets designed for speedsters half their age, grimacing and sprinting as they finished in the middle of the pack. I thought they were in denial: refusing to accept that they really couldn't compete anymore, trying to grab glory from the leaders rather than accepting that time had moved on and they should too.

I thought this so strongly that the year I turned 40 I told my high school running partner that I was going to train for one last strong marathon, then "retire" from running competitively. My retirement lasted nearly three years, partly because I was injured for about a year of it. Then came last summer, when I felt the old desire to run hard, run well, set a goal and test myself against time, distance and others–despite being 43, and nearly a minute per mile slower at 5 or 10K than I was a decade ago.

Four months later I was at the USATF Masters Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Orono, Maine. I went to Orono with two goals: to run the best 10,000m I could, and to see if I could find out from these more experienced masters, Why? Why are so many of us unhappy unless we're eyeballs-out, puking over a finish line, when we should perhaps gracefully bow out, take it easier and act our age?

Reshaping Ourselves

For Gary Hall of Fresno, Calif., third in both the M60 800m and 1500m, it began with a look in the mirror. "I was on a cruise to Mexico in my early 40s, and made the mistake of going into the gym. There were mirrors all over the walls and I saw myself." Only, it wasn't him. The guy Hall saw in the mirror was a fat guy with a big pot belly. He didn't want to be that guy. He wanted himself back. Running helped him find that remembered, younger self, the wiry little guy I met in Orono.

"I like being in shape," Hall says when I ask him to explain why he races now. Jim Boughter, a miler from Colorado Springs, says, "I guess it's because I like to eat, and I don't want to get fat." No doubt both are true, but general fitness doesn't go very far as an explanation: There are easier ways to keep weight off than running 5:14 for the 1500m at 60, as Boughter did in Orono. And as for Hall, while regaining fitness may have gotten him out on the road, now his face lights up with a boyish grin when he describes his races: "In the 800, I went out hard: I was leading it for 300 meters–against [Larry] Barnum, and [Harold] Nolan!" he gushes, as giddy as a high school freshman racing legendary upperclassmen. Clearly, fitness is not the only motivator for masters, or we'd be doing no more than our daily constitutional 30-minute run/walk.

The Competition

Kathy Martin, 55, of Northport, N.Y., gives a more plausible explanation. "It's the competition, really," she says. "It is so much fun to compete against all the other runners." In her case, "compete" usually means "beat" or maybe "dominate" or "crush." She won every distance event at the championships, from 800m to 10,000m, setting two American records in the process. In the 800m, she paced herself early in the race, giving the competition a 20-meter lead after one lap. "Coming around at the bell, I heard Pete [the meet announcer] saying 'It is anybody's race,'" she told me as she cooled down. "I'm saying to myself, 'I don't think so.'" She reeled them all in on the final turn and won going away (2:36.62) down the homestretch. Fun indeed.

Everyone at the national championship meet obviously enjoys competing. Lorraine Jasper, winner of the W45 800m from Birchrunville, Pa., says, "I respect anyone who steps out onto this track. In a road race, you can hide, but here, you're putting it on the line." Anyone who steps on the track embraces that challenge.

Thinking of my own motivations, I am no exception. While I, too, claim that daily runs for fitness and mental sanity are really the reason I run, I simply don't run as much when I don't have a race to prepare for, and looming competition gets me out of bed and onto the track on a 90-degree summer morning. I like myself better when I get to the track. What is more, the older I get, the less I worry about performing poorly, and the more I enjoy the actual experience of competing, measuring myself against others, having a reason to push–win or lose, good day or bad day.

The Sweet Spot

Good days are, of course, more fun. In June, soon after starting my track workouts for Orono, I ran a small 5K road race. I got second. Overall. Did I mention it was a small 5K? Nevertheless, there on the result board was my name, age 43, snuck into a list of 16- and 17-year-olds in the top five. A week later, I spanked an 18-year-old running friend in a fartlek workout. Never mind that he had just started summer workouts and hadn't built aerobic strength yet. That I was in front of him, feeling strong, goading him on, was enough to keep me in this game for at least another year.

Days like that are what got multiple American record-holder Alisa Harvey of Manassas, Va., back onto the track as a master. "I was coasting for a couple of years," she recalls. "Then, a few years ago, I was coaching college girls, and they were running 2:21-2:22, and I'm thinking, 'I'm 39, and I can run faster than that.' So I got back into it." In 2007, she set masters' records in the 800m and the mile, and in Orono she won the W40 800m and 1500m easily. Her reason for still competing? "Because I'm so damn good at it," she says. "It's hard to give up something that you can do so well."

While this is, I'm sure, particularly true for someone like Harvey, even a runner far less talented, such as me, can relate. It's addictive doing something well: an act practiced, refined and performed at the edge of your ability, be it running, painting, singing or roping–any activity that combines God-given gifts with years of experience so that it flows from you as if you were born to do it.

But there's a fly in the ointment of time. "Of course, you keep getting slower, which is a bummer to deal with," says Harold Nolan, winner of the M60 1500m from Navesink, N.J. While we learn pretty early on in running that one person's disaster is another's PR, at some point we create our own personal scale for what is "good," which can be hard to adjust. Age-grading tables help some. Along the same lines was Doug Goodhue's comment after his victory in the M65 10,000m: "A sub-40 10K is not bad for a man my age. It's not what I was hoping for, but when you look at it like that, it is pretty good." (See Age Group Ace on page 72 for more on Goodhue.)

Aging gives us this comfort: If we take our eyes off our old measures of success and look around at others our age, we look increasingly better. Nolan says when he gets down about aging, his wife reminds him of a "Master of the Mile" race he ran in Miami nearly 20 years ago against other top 40-year-olds; today he's the only one of that group still competing. We're not ignorant that we aren't what we once were, but we're still doing it, and we can feel the old excellence when we run.

Bring Back that Loving Feeling

We're addicted to that familiar feeling of flow, as well as all the other emotions associated with running and racing. One aspect of aging that has surprised me is that fewer situations engage my emotions; days and months can go by without my ever feeling completely alive and here. Stepping up to a line can provide the necessary edge to engender a rush of youthful awareness. Talking with Nolan in the dorm about his races, he tells me, "In the 800m, I knew Barnum would be my competition. I'm standing on the starting line, getting butterflies, thinking: 'Here I am, 60 years old...'"

Even training can give us an outlet for immoderate displays of effort and passion. Bill Pontius of Rochester, N.Y., fourth in the M55 long hurdles, says, "I like the intensity. I liked jogging as well, to keep in shape. But there's nothing like taking it to the edge in an interval workout, almost puking." I too find I still like the intensity of running hard, even if my youthful self used to consider it undecorous for graying geezers.

As Good as it Gets

I had several workouts over the summer that took me to the familiar and welcome edge of losing my lunch. But, I couldn't fully indulge, as I had a decade ago. Life required some middle-aged moderation. Work travel made me adapt some track workouts to less-intense tempo or fartlek runs. I took my 6-year-old son to the track more than once, and, while he helped out counting laps or bringing me water, his patience got stretched, understandably, during long workouts like a 25-lap tempo run. On that one, after trying to get my attention for three or four laps, he yelled at me as I came around for the 21st time, "Will you PLEASE stop!" I did.

According to a study of nationally competitive masters women conducted by Cathy Utzschneider for her doctoral dissertation at Boston College, this–having too many responsibilities to juggle–is their greatest obstacle to success, scoring a far greater percentage than the effects of aging or getting injured. So, I'm far from unique. The difference now is that in the past, if my training had gone as imperfectly as it did last summer, I might have considered not running something as high profile as a national championship. But I didn't cancel.

Neither did 93-year-old Max Springer, although a health issue kept him from running for much of he previous year. He's competed in all but one championship since 1993, and took silver in the 400m (2:45.47) and 800m (6:22.01) and a bronze in the 200m (64.54) in 2007, despite little training. He can't afford to wait until it goes perfectly to compete. Next year, he knows he may not be able to come. "I was almost finished after last year," he told the Bangor Daily News, "but I recovered enough to make it here for this...Age will catch up with me sooner or later. We'll see if I'm still active when I'm 95."

While I have more years left (hopefully–none of us knows, of course), I too am aware that time isn't unlimited. So I went, and ran. For the record, I was sixth out of seven in my age group, finishing in 38:22. The only thing I'm proud of is that I found the desire to speed up and pass that one runner in my age group in the final 800m. But, I'm happy that I did it. Are there dozens of 40-year-olds who can run faster? No doubt, maybe hundreds. Is it the best I can do at 43? Probably not (as I'm writing this, three months later, I think I could do better today). But that's largely irrelevant. It is what I did do, and I'm learning that that is what matters.

Embracing Mortality

In the end, I've come to the conclusion that I used to be 180 degrees wrong about masters competitors. We (I can say "we" now) aren't denying our age. We are reminded, every time we race, nearly every time we run, that we're slower, and that it isn't a matter of being out of shape: We're not going to get back to those fast times ever again. We know for certain that five years from now, 10 years from now, we will be even slower. We are reminded, every day, that we have started down the slope that ends in death.

No, competing isn't denial. Hanging up our flats and believing we are the same we were a decade ago, or that we could run as fast as we used to in a fictional reality–if we had time to train more, if we weren't injured, if the conditions were better–that would be denial. Masters are too old to believe those fantasies any more. We know clearly that all the should'ves, could'ves and would'ves are make believe. The "perfect" day when we are at the top of our form and all the stars align never has come in the past, and we don't have time to wait for it anymore. Today is the only day we've got, and we'll seize it with more passion than a teenager.

In attitude, emotions and motivation, masters are little different than we were 10, 20, 30 years ago. "The only time I know I'm old is when I look in the mirror," says white-haired Goodhue, at 65. Even at 43, looking in the mirror, I can tell I'm getting older: My beard has more grey than brown and the wrinkles on my face are permanent. Considering the cohort I am now a part of, however, the group of healthy, competitive men and women fearlessly embracing time in Orono, I don't mind. I'm proud to be a young old runner. I hope I'll be grimacing toward a finish line at 90, and, you know what? I don't care what anyone thinks about that.